(RNS) Just as heaven is often depicted as people sitting on clouds strumming harps, “Latter-day Saints’ doctrine of exaltation is often similarly reduced in media to a cartoonish image of people receiving their own planets,” the statement says.

(RNS) Worried observers could have mistaken Pope Francis’ pastoral gesture to atheists as an effort to dilute the gospel rather than what he really intended — an evangelical outreach intended to bring nonbelievers closer to Christ.

(RNS) The wives of men who claim to have visited heaven in a near-death experience are now telling their side of the story. And for the spouses, life changes nearly as much as it did for the men they nearly lost.